President Returns Home To Bury Boyhood Friend

By JASON DePARLE,

Published: July 24, 1993

Correction Appended

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., July 23—
President Clinton came home today to bury a boyhood friend and the mystery surrounding his unlikely suicide.

Speaking in a cathedral packed with the state's political and legal elite, the President described Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel, as a lifelong protector whose failure to protect himself is beyond human understanding.

"We could never remember a time when he ever asked us to protect him; it was always the other way around," Mr. Clinton said. "If there is a sadness" to the day of tribute, he said, it is that "sometimes Vince ignored his own advice."

Mr. Foster, 48, was found dead on Tuesday night in a Northern Virginia park, after apparently putting the barrel of a gun inside his mouth and pulling the trigger. He was a childhood friend of the President and a longtime confidant and law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton. There is no known motive for the apparent suicide. Shared Backyards

Mr. Clinton spoke at the service in Little Rock, then traveled 105 miles southwest for the burial in Hope, Ark., where he and Mr. Foster as children had shared neighboring backyards. The President was joined by Mrs. Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea.

A host of the other Arkansans who like Mr. Foster had risen to positions of national influence made the trip back home as well. Mr. Foster's former law partner, Webster Hubbell, now a top Justice Department official, was there. And so was Mr. Foster's boyhood friend, Thomas F. McLarty 3d, now the White House chief of staff.

The 450 seats at St. Andrew's Cathedral were filled to overflowing, and scores of Mr. Foster's friends and acquaintances were turned away, milling about on sidewalks as temperatures climbed to 100 degrees.

Mr. Foster's associates have been unable to fathom the suicide of a man widely admired as a portrait of poise. "Let us put our curious minds to rest," said the Rev. George Tribou, the rector of Catholic High School for Boys, in a eulogy at the service. Mr. Foster's son, Brugh, is a student at the school.

Father Tribou then offered his own explanation, describing Mr. Foster as a sensitive, giving and humble man, momentarily stunned by the weight of his professional life.

"He had given so much of that life to his wife, his children, his friends and his work," he said, that in a moment of depression he felt that "what he has left to give was so insignificant in the great scheme of things that he really didn't matter." Four Decades of Friendship

Mr. Clinton, by contrast, did not even attempt to explain. "I don't think that any of us will ever know why his life ended the way it did," Mr. Clinton said to reporters before leaving Washington this morning. Though the Justice Department is investigating the death, Mr. Clinton said, "I don't think anything's going to come out of it."

At the service, Mr. Clinton spoke in a raspy, emotional voice and described four decades of friendship that began, in part, with a game of throwing knives at the ground. "The knives didn't stick, but the friendship did," he said.

Calling Mr. Foster a man of understated humor, Mr. Clinton recalled seeking his help for his first political race, in 1976. He said Mr. Foster replied, dryly, "All right, all right, I'm all fired up."

He recalled nights that the Clinton and Foster families had spent together "listening to music and drinking spirits and being incredibly silly," and he closed paraphrasing Leon Russell, the pop musician: "I love you in a place that has no space and time."

"Go well my friend, and Godspeed," Mr. Clinton said. He told mourners to "make sure that he will never be evaluated by how his life ended, but by how it was lived."

Among the documents being scoured for clues, is a commencement speech Mr. Foster gave this year at the University of Arkansas Law School, where he spoke of "roads I wish I had traveled." He seemed to wish that he had done more public service work, traveled more and spent more time with his family.

"God only allows us so many opportunities with our children, to read a story, go fishing, play catch, say our prayers together," he said. Mr. Foster described Washington as a place with longer hours and fewer financial rewards than home.

A motorcade nearly 40 cars long followed the President to Hope, where the burial service was closed to reporters.

Although Mr. Foster's life had been praised by some of the country's most powerful officials, Father Tribou said the greatest honor came from someone not present, a Swiss exchange student who had spent last year living at the Foster household.

Father Tribou said he once asked the student if he was homesick. The priest recalled the student saying, " 'You can't wish you were somewhere else, even home, when you are with Vince Foster.' "

Photo: Lisa Foster, the widow of Vincent W. Foster Jr., who was deputy White House counsel, receiving friends after her husband's funeral yesterday at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Little Rock, Ark. (Associated Press)

Correction: July 29, 1993, Thursday An article on Saturday about the funeral of Vincent W. Foster Jr., the deputy White House counsel, referred incorrectly in some editions to the source of a quotation used by President Clinton in his eulogy. He was paraphrasing Leon Russell, the pop musician, not Leon Redbone, the jazz musician, when he said, "I love you in a place that has no space and time."